


and stole the color from the sun

by NegativeBlue



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Basically a post Dark!Swan fic, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4860542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NegativeBlue/pseuds/NegativeBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love could be a weapon as well.</p><p>Regina almost forgot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and stole the color from the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick one-shot that plays in the future after Emma is no longer the DO. Assumes Regina and Emma were together before Emma became the DO too. The ladies don't have any love interests in this fic, nor references to them. It's my sandbox to play it.
> 
> (all my thanks to Antti for supporting/betaing)
> 
> Title taken from Dotan's: Let the river in.

* * *

 

 

It’s still dark when she wakes up. Her thoughts are hazy, fleeting, caught on the fraying edges of her dreamscape.

 

She’s not alone. A single glimpse towards her window confirms it. Rays of moonlight spill through the curtains and create a shadowplay across the walls as the figure near the window restlessly shifts from one foot to the other.

 

“Are you ready to talk about it now?”

 

Even with the soft uttering of the words, it still sounds too loud in the hollow silence of the room. As if she had set things in motion which could no longer be stopped. The way Emma’s shoulders tense up before she turns around to face her makes Regina wonder if it would have been a better choice to stay silent instead. Even if it means things between them would remain the same. The age old dance with neither of them wanting to make the first move.

 

Perhaps it would’ve been better to remain silent.

 

But Emma is here now. For the first time in months and silence is so far from her mind now. With all these unspoken questions and accusations, this bitterness that left a tangy cloying taste in her mouth. Everything that threatens to spill out and all she can do is bite her lip and prop herself more upright against the pillows, gaze firmly trained on an unmoving Emma.

 

“Is that why you think I’m here?”

 

There’s a glittering in Emma’s eyes as she speaks. Something that hasn’t been there before. It reminds her of how they might’ve been able to take the darkness out of the savior, but it would be much harder to take the savior out of the darkness.

 

“Unless nightly surprise visits are a new sort of hobby you’ve taken up,” she sasses back with more confidence than she feels.

 

She’s still barely clothed and for some reason having this sort of conversation in the private sanctum of her bedroom makes her feel even more vulnerable. And the feeling doesn’t abate when Emma cocks her head and silently appraises her.

 

She takes a few steps forward but stops before she reaches the bed and Regina doesn’t know what to make of the expression on Emma’s face. But she does recognise the way Emma looks at her. Shimmering emerald eyes lock with her own and Regina can’t look away even if she wants to.

 

It’s a silent apology. Something that she knows wouldn’t be enough for everything that had happened between them. All the things that kept bringing them together, only to push them apart again. It makes Regina wonder how much damage would be enough. For them to decide that this time things couldn’t be fixed.

 

It wouldn’t be this moment.

 

Even though her heart aches with the newly formed scars. And her mind ripples with the wounds that haven’t truly healed yet. But it’s Emma. And something about Emma has always made her wander along roads that she would’ve never traveled otherwise. Something about Emma always affected her too deeply. Made her feel everything too much.

 

In the past she had sometimes wondered why this was. If it had been love all the way from the start. Or something else entirely. But they had always been able to bring out the best and worst in each other.

 

“Did you mean what you said to me yesterday?”

 

Perhaps she does prefer the silence. It would be better than these questions which she knows will lead to overdue conversations. But they would also rip open so many wounds. And how much of it would be worth it?

 

“That you forgave me.”

 

Emma’s casts her eyes down as she speaks but Regina doesn’t need to see them to recognise the remorse in Emma’s words.

 

“I did.”

 

But the memories are still there. And it still stings to think of how Emma manipulated her, how Emma betrayed the trust they had been building up.

 

“I..woke up earlier,” Emma starts, then hesitates, the internal struggle displayed across her features. “And it felt like something was crushing me, as if there was a huge weight on my chest. I don’t really remember what I dreamt about. Maybe it was a nightmare.” A soft humorless chuckle follows and then Emma walks back towards the window she had been standing at before.

 

“I just wanted to be here.”

 

“To talk?”

 

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to talk about, Regina.”

 

It only takes her a split second to make the decision to swing her legs across the edge of the bed and grab her bathrobe from the chair next to it. She doesn’t walk towards Emma, not just yet, knowing all too well that things changed. That Emma changed, and that she now more than ever needed her space.

 

“Killing people changes you Emma.”

 

“It does. But I’ve come to realize that’s not why I’m here.”

 

Emma is bracing herself against the window with one of her hands, moonlight half illuminating her face, the tightening of muscles along her jaw. It’s still dark in her bedroom otherwise, but it no longer feels oppressive like it did before. More of a companion to the complex jumble of thoughts that she was attempting to sort through.

 

“I don’t think I understand.”

 

“You’re the only one who won’t assuage my guilt.”

 

A furtive glance across a shoulder and Regina swallows, feeling emotions well up without her consent.

 

“Because you know what it’s like. You’ve been there. All my parents are thinking of is how much I’m supposed to struggle with the guilt.” Emma smirks and it brings back some of the coldness of the Dark One to her features. “While the truth is, that I don’t really feel guilty. Not about that at least. I figured it would be worth it in the end. They were just in the way, nameless faces, dead before their bodies hit the ground.”

 

And somewhere along the way they shifted along this axis as well. Evil and good, or just a lot of no man’s ground in the middle. Regina likes to think that it’s where they will eventually end their dance. Somewhere in the middle. A coalescence of everything, all the ways they’ve hurt each other and still came out stronger in the end.

 

“But I was losing control.”

 

“And you thought by taking my heart and manipulating me you could take it back?”

 

Phantom tendrils slip through her chest, wrap themselves around her heart. The pain is cold and razor sharp, an endless amount of needles ripping through her flesh. She’d been immobilized but she had still been able to feel. Feel and experience everything and the shock and betrayal still linger even now. How she had pleaded Emma with her eyes to not do this, to not use her in this way, like a puppet on a string, like so many others had before her.

 

But Emma hadn’t even hesitated and everything had just fell apart afterwards.

 

And things still haven’t been mended back together. So many splintered pieces that she doesn’t know where to start.

 

Though she supposes from the way Emma looks at her, heartrendingly sorrowful, perhaps it would be a moment like this. Standing together in the darkness. A quiet stolen moment away from what the daylight would bring.

 

Another shift in their relationship.

 

“I said I was sorry for that.”

 

“But they are just words, Emma. They don’t really m..”

 

Emma’s sudden movements take her by surprise and then warm fingers slide along her jaw and cup her chin and she loses track of whatever she had been meaning to say. And maybe it isn’t important. Maybe it is just an affirmation of how they communicate these days. Because she can still feel how much Emma loves her with every touch, with every glance, every unspoken word.

 

She takes short shuddery breaths, rests their foreheads together for a moment and a few threads weave themselves back together.

 

“I’m just so tired, Regina. I feel like I’ve been running for months, and there’s never a moment’s respite and I’m just so tired.”

 

She clasps one of Emma’s hands in her own and leads her to back to the bed. Wordlessly she takes of Emma’s shoes and waits for her to make herself comfortable beneath the sheets. And it only registers to her then that Emma is lying on the same spot she used to sleep on.

 

A thought that makes her wonder if Emma will be sleeping there again at some point in the future. She reclines against the pillows, watches quietly as Emma drifts off to sleep.

 

A part of her thinks they can talk more once Emma wakes up.

 

And a part of her realizes that this could be a new painful memory in the morning instead.

 

* * *

 


End file.
